As cards to be used in financial institutions and other facilities for the purpose of realization of cashless service and personal authentication, conventionally there are a magnetic card in which a magnetic stripe is formed on a surface of the card, and an IC card in which an integrated-circuit chip (IC chip) is embedded internally and an IC terminal is placed on a surface of the card. Furthermore, widely spreading is a use of a non-contact IC card in which an IC chip and a communication antenna (an antenna coil) are embedded, and with which information is transmitted through electromagnetic induction. Such a non-contact IC card has the advantage that operations of the card at the time of recording and/or reproducing information are not badly affected by contamination and abrasion of a surface of the card.
In order to record and/or reproduce information into/from a magnetic card and an IC card, used is a magnetic card reader equipped with a magnetic head and an IC contact, respectively. In the meantime, for recording and/or reproducing information into/from a non-contact IC card, used is a non-contact card reader equipped with a non-contact communication antenna (Refer to Patent Document 1).
The IC card reader disclosed in Patent Document 1 is a conventional type of magnetic card reader additionally including the function of a non-contact card reader. Being compared with a non-contact card reader of a type, over which a card is held in operation, the above IC card reader is different from that type of non-contact card reader from the viewpoint that a card communication distance is kept to be always constant. Moreover, in general, a card reader internally has quite a few of metal parts, and therefore the non-contact communication antenna must be located at a position where the electromagnetic characteristics of the non-contact communication antenna are preferably less impaired. Accordingly, in the case of a type of card reader equipped with a non-contact communication antenna internally, such as the IC card reader described above, sometimes it may be required to adjust the position of the non-contact communication antenna at the design phase or the evaluation phase just before the product delivery.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-342723
However, non-contact IC cards being used actually have their own unique characteristics according to specifications of their ICs being used, antenna shapes, and other factors. Accordingly, though it is preferable to adjust the position of the non-contact communication antenna through testing communications with various non-contact IC cards being used as many as possible in order to improve general versatility, the adjustment work itself becomes complicated.
At least an embodiment of the present invention provides a card reader that is able to have an increased accuracy in communication with non-contact IC cards even when the non-contact IC cards have their own specific characteristics within the allowable standard range.